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May 2010 | Issue 68
From the Editor
Articles
Fast Food NationCorn-fed Culture: Living Large and "Eating Shit" in King Corn and Fast Food Nation
By Gregory Stephens
"The films analyzed here explore the (crude) question: what are the individual and social consequences of eating shit?"
Minimalist Magic: The Star Trek Look
By Mervyn Nicholson
"By treating the style of the original series as integral to the show — and not as a kind of regrettable defect — we can get a better grasp on the Star Trek phenomenon itself."
Boris Godunov in America: Notes on a Meyerhold Production Resurrected
By Andrew Grossman
"My God! — cried out a querulous voice within me — is it possible that we, artists of the stage, are doomed by the materiality of our bodies to eternal servitude and the representation of crude reality?" ~ Stanislavsky
Looking at Charlie: The Great Dictator
By Alan Vanneman
An Occasional Series on the Life and Work of Charlie Chaplin
DollhouseA Thousand Blooms: Inside Joss Whedon's Dollhouse
By Lesley Chow
"At a moment when the most feeble signs of self-actualization are seen as a resurgence of feminism, Whedon shows us the melancholy and troubling side of 'girl power.'"
Why Do We Crave Horror? Evolutionary Psychology and Viewer Response to Horror Films
By Maximilian Werner
"We do not realize that 'normal' behavior needs to be explained at all." ~ Laura Cosmides
"Fucking Queer": Eastern Promises and the Traditions of Noir
By Peter Forster
"The filmmaker, having scrupulously established the world of film noir, queers it by shattering the categories — both narrative and cinematic — of the world itself."
Fifty plus Fifty: The Fifty Year Decline and Fall of Hollywood Reconsidered: The Sorrows of Ezra, as Told by Himself
By Alan Vanneman
He worked for Time; that can do things to a man
Living Backward: The Millennials' Alice
By Joseph Natoli
Alice
"We are but older children, dear, / Who fret to find our bedtime near." ~ Lewis Carroll, "Child of the Pure Unclouded Brow"
Los Angeles in Theory and Practice: Thom Andersen's Los Angeles Plays Itself
By Madison Brookshire
"In a powerful and precise encomium, Andersen extols the virtues of what he deems to be a kind of homegrown neo-realism."
OssessioneOssessione: Shabby Little Shocker?
By D. J. M. Saunders
Or Advanced Guide to Cinematic Survival?
The Irish Queer vs. the IRA Macho: The Subversive Tranny in Neil Jordan's Breakfast on Pluto
By Sara Villa
"The transvestite's camp humor is here used to stress the unsustainability of the military discourses on which the justification of IRA terrorism is based."
Reconceptualizing the Uncanny Vampire: Claire Denis' Trouble Every Day
By Mark Chapman
"We are no longer in an era of vampire stories." ~ Jean-Luc Nancy"
TV Notes: Bandits, Crime Fighters and Bounty Hunters
By Bruno Mikanowski
Cowboy Bebop
"When you come at the king, you best not miss."
Early 3D, A Case Study: The Teleview and The Man from M.A.R.S.
By Henry William Francis Rownd
"Less than a month after premiering for an 'indefinite time' at the Selwyn, the Teleview was pulled."
Movies
Bigger Than Life: Nicholas Ray in the Life of the Gray Flannel Darkness
By Erich Kuersten
"Art, entertainment, and genuine fear and tragedy rarely all filter down into a deceptively 'normal American family film' with such quiet desperation."
The CoveTroubled Waters: Crashing into The Cove
By Ilan Kapoor
"To twist Gayatri Spivak's famous phrase, it's a case of (mostly) 'white men saving cute dolphins from yellow men.'"
"Riveting" — Not! Gerald Peary's For the Love of Movies — The Story of American Film Criticism
By Alan Vanneman
Talking heads, talking of talking heads
When Luck Runs Out: Preston Sturges' Gallic Swan Song
By Cullen Gallagher
"I have always contended that in addition to talent, success depends on a little bit of luck, and my luck seemed to have run out, professionally at least." ~ Preston Sturges, on the making of The French, They Are a Funny Race
"A Walking Childish Id": Matthew Vaughn's Kick-Ass
By Lee Weston Sabo
"Superheroes live best in their own world." ~ David Mazzucchelli
PattonIn Praise of Dangerous Men: Patton (1970)
By Erich Kuersten
"The very idea of losing is hateful to Americans."
Michael Powell's Peeping Tom: An Introduction
By Mark Chapman
Take your seats for a "dark-hearted, midnight fantasia of ecstatic sadism, voyeurism and psychosis"!
Outstanding Defense Mechanisms: The Phrenology of Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island
By Joseph Jon Lanthier
Shutter Island might be the only psychological thriller abetted by a lack of interest in the psyche.
Someone to Fight over Me: Feminism, S&M, and the Daemonic in Twilight
By Erich Kuersten
"The pain is my only reminder that he [Edward] was real." ~ Bella (Kristen Stewart)
Valentine's Day: It Sucks Being a Woman
By Amy Stotz
"Traditional gender roles seem to be in no danger of evolving."
Where the Wild Things AreWild Love: Spike Jonze Meets Maurice Sendak in Where the Wild Things Are
By Dorian Fox
"I'll eat you up. I love you so."
The Children Are Watching You: Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon
By Ian Johnston
"Like any old-style modernist, Haneke likes to make the audience work."
Stars
Forgotten Charleys I: Charley Bowers: Silent Comedy's Wizard of the Bizarre
By Imogen Sara Smith
"He is Aladdin and the camera is his lamp." ~ James R. Quirk
Forgotten Charleys II: Charley Chase: Mr. Normal Unleashes His Comic Demon
By Imogen Sara Smith
"He could be suave or awkward, likable or pesky, average or eccentric, a winner or a loser, a fussy nerd or the life of the party, all the while remaining Charley Chase."
Cary Grant: Prince of Denmark
By Eric G. Wilson
Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn in Sylvia Scarlett
"If we take Grant seriously, we must contend with an extreme difficulty: what appears to be fake, an actor portraying a character, might be real; what we normally think of as real, a person gesturing in the everyday world, might well be artificial."
Nuts and Nice Messes: On Laurel and Hardy
By Dan Callahan
"Life isn't short enough . . ." ~ Laurel in Sons of the Desert (1934)
Florence Lawrence: "The First Movie Star"
By Christopher Sandford
"Lawrence had become a movie star for many reasons — gentleness, grace, that silky hair, and what Laemmle assessed as 'sensational bubbies.'"
Movie Art
Abnormal brain"What More Could a Boy Want?": An Interview with Jim McDermott
By Gary Morris
"I'm using the computer (Photoshop) a bit more than I like to admit, but I still love traditional illustration, watercolor and oils."
Directors
A Writer's Evolution: An Interview with Eddie Muller
By Matthew Sorrento
"[My film] is stylized and theatrical because the story is so telescoped — we have a life-and-death outcome played out over 20 actual minutes."
Portrait of a Soundscapist: An Interview with Peter Strickland
By Zsolt Gyori
"I had to allow time to let experience ferment inside me, and by then you forget whether what you went through was useful or not!"
Columns
PermissiveBright Sights: Recent DVDs:Lola Montès, City Girl, The Constance Talmadge Collection (Her Night of Romance, Her Sister from Paris), The Norma Talmadge Collection (Kiki, Within the Law), Black Snow, Permissive, The Italian Straw Hat
By Gordon Thomas
An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases
Festivals
Tout Ne Va Pas Bien: Rendez-vous with French Cinema 2010
By Megan Ratner
"Vestiges of French customs and family life remain throughout these films, yet their concerns testify to a rapidly shifting society."
Books
America's Film Legacy, by Daniel Eagan
Reviewed by Matthew Kennedy
Robert Altman: The Oral Biography, by Mitchell Zukoff
Reviewed by Matthew Kennedy
A Short History of Cahiérs du Cinema, by Emilie Bickerton
Reviewed by Ian Johnston
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